Trio of newcomers pitch Nationals to tense win over Angels

ANAHEIM, Calif. - Dusty Baker handed the ball to three pitchers during tonight's 4-3 victory over the Angels. Not one was a member of the active roster until 2:30 p.m., each summoned to join this staff at this particular moment in time out of necessity.

Edwin Jackson was here because Joe Ross blew out his elbow and suddenly this team with All-Stars anchoring its rotation needed a fifth starter. The 33-year-old journeyman promptly threw seven innings of two-run, three-hit ball to earn his first win in a Nationals uniform since 2012.

Ryan Madson and Sean Doolittle were here because the Nats bullpen had become such a problem over the last 3 1/2 months that Mike Rizzo had no choice but to make a bold mid-July trade and bring in two late-inning relievers from Oakland in one fell swoop. Madson proceeded to retire the side in the eighth inning, then Doolittle rebounded from a few tense moments to retire a pair of likely Hall of Famers and secure his first save with his new club.

Just like everyone drew it up beforehand, right?

"I promise they won't all be like that," Doolittle said with a smile after escaping with the tying run standing on second base.

OK, so maybe it wound up being a bit more tense than anyone would have preferred. But the mere fact the Nationals won this game in this manner - seven strong innings from their starter, then one inning a piece from their two newly acquired relievers - was reason enough for celebration.

Lord knows, the dugout was fired up about it all, mobbing Madson after he returned from the mound at the end of the eighth.

"That was a super-exciting eighth inning when Maddy went in there and did his job," said Bryce Harper, who supplied much of the offense with a 4-for-4 performance. "I don't think anyone's ever been more excited in a big league ballgame that we got out of the eighth inning in this game. It just goes to show how good those two guys are. I'm very excited to see Madson come in and do that and Doolittle do that."

Both Madson and Doolittle admitted having extra adrenaline raging through their bodies when they took the mound for the first time as Nationals. Both compared it not to the postseason games they've pitched in before, but rather their major league debuts.

"Something about it," said Madson, who owns two World Series rings. "I don't know. Something about it was that intense. I was just glad to be able to throw strikes."

Doolittle wasn't able to throw strikes at first, neither in his warmup tosses nor in the four consecutive balls he threw to Nick Franklin to open the bottom of the ninth. The subsequent one-out double he surrendered to Kole Calhoun - the first hit by a left-handed batter against him in 25 tries this season - also came as a shock.

"I think you could tell, there were a little bit of nerves in the beginning, a leadoff walk," Doolittle said. "Then I started to settle down. But when you walk the leadoff guy, you kind of open up Pandora's Box a little bit."

No problem, because Doolittle simply shattered Mike Trout's bat on an RBI groundout to short, then got Albert Pujols to fly out to left to end the game and secure the 37th save of his career.

"Once (pitching coach Mike Maddux) came out and kind of gave me a breather and talked to (Matt) Wieters, things started to slow down a little bit," the left-hander said. "I felt really good about what we talked about on the mound, going after him, and was able to execute a couple really good pitches when I had to."

There were no tense moments with Jackson on the mound, that's how effective the veteran starter was in his return to the Nationals five years after he left.

Club officials honestly didn't know what to expect from Jackson tonight. The man has bounced around from organization to organization since he last donned a curly W cap, and his signing to a minor league contract last month was more of a token move to a popular former player than anything.

But after posting an 0.44 ERA in five starts at Triple-A Syracuse, and after Ross went down just before the All-Star break to an elbow injury that will require Tommy John surgery, the Nationals figured there was no harm in promoting Jackson and seeing what the 33-year-old still had in the tank.

"My expectations were: I didn't have any," Baker said.

Turned out Jackson had plenty left to show them. Despite a shaky first inning that included a leadoff single to Cameron Maybin (who wound up injuring his knee trying to steal second) and then Trout's 448-foot homer, Jackson quickly found his groove and cruised through the rest of his night.

The right-hander wasn't overpowering - he struck out only three batters - but he also kept the ball around the plate - he didn't issue any walks - and induced weak contact. Martín Maldonado's solo homer in the sixth briefly gave the Angels the lead, but Anthony Rendon's homer in the top of the seventh tied the game right back up.

And when Harper led off the eighth with a hustle triple - he made it from the plate to third base in 11.28 seconds - and then scored moments later on Ryan Zimmerman's single up the middle, the Nationals put Jackson in position for a well-earned win that justified his decision to stick it out after getting released by the Orioles earlier this summer.

"I'm out here to cherish every moment," Jackson said. "I've been through my ups, I've been through my downs. I've been in Triple-A. I've had people asking me: 'Why am I still here? Why am I still playing? I've made some money in the game. Why don't I just go home and enjoy the family?'

"But I still feel like I have something in the tank. And I still feel like I don't have anything to prove to anyone else. I still have something to prove to myself that I can go out and I still can be effective and I can be efficient and I can help this team do something that they've already been on the path to doing."

Jackson to Madson to Doolittle. Nobody with the Nationals could have drawn up that game plan a week ago. Tonight, it proved the path to victory.